Rosemary Banana Bread

These next few posts will be a collection of projects that have kept me busy over the last month.  Morsels.  I'll go ahead and tell you, if you don't like rosemary, you should probably browse on back to tumblr or pinterest or whatever it is the young kids do these days.  With their music.  And saggy pants.  But really, I have been rosemary-ing everything, from tea to banana bread to peasant bread!  Can't stop, addicted to the rosemary.  I should probably skip the music career and stick to baking and knitting...



Brown Butter Rosemary Banana Bread

3-4 superripe bananas
2 (3-inch) springs fresh rosemary + 1 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
1/3 cup salted butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 lightly beaten egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
probably 1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 C flour

Mash the bananas with the tablespoon of chopped rosemary, and let sit for a while.  [See Recipe Notes]

Preheat the oven to 350°F.  Butter a loaf pan.  


Melt the 1/3 cup butter in a small saucepan with the rosemary sprigs and allow it to turn a medium brown over medium heat.  It should smell nutty, but I evidently have an immunity to aromatic nuttiness, in wine aromas and otherwise.  Take it off the burner immediately and allow it to cool.

Mix the brown sugar, cooled butter*, egg, and vanilla into the bananas.  Sprinkle the baking soda and salt on, then mix those in too.  Gradually mix in the flour, then transfer the whole deal to your loaf pan.  Sprinkle approximately 1 tsp kosher salt and 1 tsp sugar on the top before popping in the oven for around 40 minutes, or until tester comes out clean.

Enjoy sprinkled with salt, or butter it up, or just eat it plain.


Recipe Notes: If it's going to be over an hour or so, I'd probably stick the banana-rosemary sludge in the fridge.  Be careful though--if it is too cold when you mix the batter, it may affect the baking time.  I convinced myself the bananas became infused with the rosemary flavor in the fridge, but it may not be crucial.   Also, my bread seemed to bake up a lot faster than other quick breads I've made.  I'd suggest keeping a weather eye on it.
*Note: if the butter is too hot when mixed in, the egg will cook, and no one wants scrambled eggs in their banana bread.  No one.


Coming up soon: rosemary peasant bread, monster cookies, oven-dried tomatoes, and knitted gloves!

Come Dancing!

Let me start off by saying I absolutely cannot dance, though the post title may suggest I intend to.  Let me assure you, I don't.  I do, however, intend to listen to the Kinks.

I have been making some killer meals and baked goods and knitted FOs lately!  Summer is amazing for Coon Rock Farm CSA produce.  The last few weeks have been filled with beautifully sweet yellow and orange grape tomatoes, green beans, new potatoes, and corn.  Corn on the cob used to be my favorite food as a kid, but once I got to high school I dismissed it for whatever reason.  That means that it has probably been seven or eight years since I have had corn on the cob, which is ridiculous.  It has resumed favorite food status, although these days it's more of a group of foods rather than singling out any one.

Tonight, I made some tasty broiled ginger-soy eggplant, last year's home-canned crowder peas, and corn on the cob.  So yummy and beyond affordable.  The ginger-soy sauce on the eggplant was really simple, fresh ginger, soy sauce, garlic, red pepper, sugar, sesame oil.  I started the crowder peas in some chicken stock with bacon-sauteed onion and garlic.  A quick broil for the eggplant and boiling of the corn after the beans had gotten a good head start and that was that!  I guess I boiled the corn somewhere in there.



I have been knitting lately with probably the most satisfying skein of my knitting career, Lucia from Dirty Water Dyeworks.  I won this in a drawing for Holla Knits--thanks, Allyson!  She has had a crazy number of giveaways so far.  Superwash merino with 25% nylon, the Seaweed colorway is drop-dead gorgeous.  I made the Basketweave Neckerchief (pattern from another project Allyson is affiliated with; proceeds go to WORK+SHELTER), and I'm so happy with how it turned out.



The colors are just spellbinding, and the basketweave manages to showcase the color variations while still looking smooth and fluid.  I sometimes am disappointed with how color variation comes across in sock patterns.  It can make it look kind of random and mottled, but I think this was the perfect compromise.  The subtle pooling makes me so happy.  I'm working on some fabulous fingerless mitts to go with!  I'll show off those, oh, next month or whenever my next post is.

Coconut Muffins, Tomatoes, and Knitting!

Finally, I have something knitting-related to share!  But first, the delicious muffins.  I (as usual) used Deb's recipe over at Smitten Kitchen.  I only had desiccated unsweetened coconut, so for the topping I re-hydrated 1/4 cup coconut flakes with a tablespoon or so of basil simple syrup (made a few days prior for rum-basil-lime beverages).  There's also about a tablespoon of the syrup in the body of the muffins as well.  I made three of them with some white chocolate chunks I had laying around--these are the dessert muffins.  Yum.  You can't really taste the basil, but you definitely get the tangy-ness of the yogurt.

In other news, my tomato plant is looking prolific!  I can't wait for them to ripen.



Now for the knitting.  A coworker is moving away soon to a very cold location, and I wanted to send her off with something fun: Marley's Ghost, from Winter '05 Knitty.  This was my first felting/fulling project, and I'm pretty excited with how it turned out though I did have some concerns at first.  Before I even got started on the pattern, I had resigned myself to knitting twenty (or however many) boring links, but it turned out that I really enjoyed it!  Somehow having to manipulate the already-knitted links around the DPNs while knitting the new link kept my interest while still allowing for mindless knitting.


So this beautiful knitted mess will become lovely links in the wash.

18 minutes of a hot water agitation bath leads to this:

I took these pictures before I trimmed all the fuzzies off because the light was just too good to miss.


More pictures on the project page on Ravelry here.

Club Horizon Tapenade

Last night I got to volunteer and contribute a dish to Club Horizon's Wine Tasting and Food Pairing event!  It was a ton of fun for a good cause, and I had a great time fixing up my dish.  Everyone seemed to be delighted with all the food and wine offerings from various restaurants in the area.


I had originally decided to do a fig and green olive tapenade, but the fates conspired against me as the market in Neomonde, my favorite Mediterranean place here, was out of dried figs temporarily.  Dates seemed like the next best option, and I decided to use Kalamata olives to go with the slightly earthier character of dates.  Apparently baking dates come puréed in ultra-convenient pouches, so there was no peeling or mashing to be done!  I imagine if I looked harder, I could have found pitted olives, but I did it by hand, perfecting the score-and-squeeze method.  





Small side note about convenience.  Usually when I make things that require very small pieces, I end up chopping by hand.  I don't own a food processor, and my blender is nonfunctional.  I've used cheap food processors before and thought chopping by hand was actually easier and produced cleaner results, BUT!  I borrowed my sister's awesome brand new food processor and it was amazing!  My next big purchase will be one.  It took all of a few seconds to get the olive bits to the right size, whereas I probably would have been chopping for at least half an hour.  


As for seasoning, I decided to go for subtle but interesting flavor.  There's only a tiny bit of Garam Masala (premixed from Penzey's), garlic powder, and black pepper.  Oh, and a touch of excellent extra virgin-olive oil.  Squish it all up and you've got yourself some tapenade!





Club Horizon Tapenade
Need:
1/2 package of baking dates (around 6 oz.)
1 (11 oz) jar Kalamata olives (in brine, pre-pit them)
1/4 tsp heaping Garam Masala
1/4 tsp garlic powder
drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil
chopped flat-leaf parsley for garnish


Do:
Pulse olives in food processor until minced.  Combine with the rest of ingredients!  Spread on crackers and top with parsley.  Pair with Vigneron de Saumur's rosé or any other Cabernet Franc rosé!  

Healthy(ish) Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

My most recent day off, I woke up and absolutely did not want my normal breakfast of eggs and greens.  What I really wanted was muffins from a store-bought mix, but I had no mix!  Then I realized that making them from scratch would be even more gratifying.  I also remembered I had a few small baggies of frozen puréed sugar pumpkin from the farmer's market in fall, so pumpkin muffins it was! I wanted to emulate the delicious Pumpkin Chocolate Chip muffins Spring Garden Bakery in Greensboro distributes to Tate Street Coffee, just not in gigantor form.  I think I did pretty awesome!  Very moist, quite sweet, but with a satisfying crunch from the oats and flaxseed.  It might seem kind of complicated with a lot of ingredients, but it didn't really take long to put together.

This recipe is a hybrid from one of Deb's at Smitten Kitchen and a random one on AllRecipes.  Great picture, right?  I clearly didn't imagine I would be posting it on a blog.

Really Good Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
(makes 12)

Preheat oven to 350°. Line 12 muffin cups with liners, or just grease them.

In a 1/2 cup measuring cup, put 2 tablespoons rolled oats, 1 tablespoon whole flax seeds, 2 tablespoons wheat or oat bran, and fill the rest of the measuring cup up with whole wheat flour.  Spoon, don't scoop! Blend in food processor to make oats smaller and hopefully semi-grind flax seeds.

Combine this 1/2 cup mixture in a large bowl with:
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

In another bowl, whisk together until well-combined:
1 cup pumpkin purée
3/4 cup packed brown sugar (or some combination involving honey)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (use good cinnamon!)
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1 tablespoon molasses
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Stir the flour mixture into the wet mixture until just combined, and stir in 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips.  Fill the muffin cups about 3/4 full.  I recommend topping each muffin cup with a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar.  It makes the most delicious crust.  Bake 20 minutes or until toothpick (inserted into the center, as usual) comes out clean.

New Experimental Blog!

Hooray!  I am now the proud owner of a knitting and baking blog, not to mention cooking, gardening, and whatever else I happen to have pictures of.  I can't wait to start writing up recipes and descriptions about knits I have completed!  I think for a while I will be going through old pictures and doing brief posts about past successes and failures before I get to any really new content.  (And it looks like I just learned that you have to hit "Publish" to actually publish a post.  I'm learning already!)